Our View: Bleeding Dunlap schools budget was predictable

There is an element of “welcome to the real world” in the Dunlap School District’s attempts to erase a $2.1 million budget deficit, with the School Board set to act on proposed personnel cuts tonight.

The district’s red-ink remedy, which includes laying off teachers — 17 full-time positions, 7 percent of the professional staff — has met with considerable concern and resistance among faculty and parents, which is understandable, though we could see this coming a few years ago, in the midst of the worst recession in most of our lifetimes. The opening paragraph of an Oct. 23, 2010 Journal Star story is quite the eye-opener now:

“Surrounded by school districts that have frozen wages, laid off teachers and eliminated programs to function in uncertain economic times, the Dunlap School Board has unanimously approved a three-year teachers’ contract with solid annual salary increases of 4 percent the first year and 5 percent each of the next two years.”

The annual growth in the district’s property tax base would begin a precipitous slide the following year, essentially flatlining now. Problem is, Dunlap had locked itself into much higher annual spending increases, such as the above-mentioned contract. And despite the budget imbalance that created, the School Board recently signed off on another negotiation that produced pay hikes averaging 2.6 percent in each of the next three years, while dropping the retirement incentive to a 5 percent pay increase annually over a career’s final four years, from the 6 percent to which teachers had been accustomed. It was characterized as a concession-laden agreement.

“The contract is not what Dunlap teachers are used to,” said a union co-president. Lucky them. Indeed, we’d venture to say many an area teacher would be happy with this latest contract even in a good year, forget those who toil in much of the private sector and are still waiting for their freeze to thaw and for their retirement ship to come in. Currently an entry-level Dunlap teacher starts at about $40,000, with a veteran teacher potentially topping out at $98,000; those numbers will grow.

Many district residents have been fixated on other expenditures they consider extravagant — an artificial turf football field, a roundabout in front of a new school, more upscale facilities than what you typically see elsewhere in the region — and all of that is fair game. But at the end of the day, staff salaries and benefits represent 80 percent-plus of the main operations fund. Merit doesn’t necessarily equal affordability.

Dunlap Superintendent Jay Marino is correct that “hindsight is 20-20.” The contracts are trending in a more budget-friendly direction now, he says. None of them was the disaster that the 2000 District 150 teachers’ contract became, darn near bankrupting a Peoria school system that at multiple junctures was in danger of not meeting payroll, and that did not recover for the better part of a decade.

Page 2 of 2 - Nonetheless, that the Dunlap EAV growth gravy train — double-digit increases for most of this century’s first decade — could not and would not last forever was only common sense. No school district is immune to the influence of the wider economy or to basic budget math. Dunlap may have its revenue challenges now, relatively speaking — fortunately they are not nearly as dependent on state government as some other central Illinois school districts — but its leaders will forgive those who suggest they pale in comparison to the overspending. We do think this situation was, in significant part, avoidable.

So what to do now?

The $2.1 million deficit represents 7.5 percent of the district’s $28 million education fund, a little more than 5 percent of its $40 million total budget (some of which is off limits for deficit-reduction purposes). That’s not good, but again, we’ve seen far more crippling deficits. In a school district where enrollment continues to swell and class sizes could become a legitimate issue, are answers to be found elsewhere?

Fees could climb even higher, and taxes could be increased through future referendum, though that becomes a more difficult sale in light of some of the expenditures outlined above. The district does have about $12 million in reserves, which have been tapped already and which you don’t want to draw down too much, though it could be argued that’s what a rainy day fund is for — a rainy day like this one. Teachers didn’t take the only hit here — all other salaries have been frozen, including administrative — but to soften the direct blow on the classroom, Dunlap could dip a bit more into the latter.

Four years ago, Dunlap’s then-School Board president noted that, while “sensitive to the public’s perception” regarding the stewardship of their dollars in an economic downturn, “we haven’t really heard any pushback on the contract,” which made them “market leaders.” The “pushback” is occurring now. But again, nothing is happening in District 323 that hasn’t happened to every other school district in central Illinois. It will be addressed, it won’t be the end of the world, and with some luck and wisdom, Dunlap schools will be the stronger for it in the long run.